There are many qualities I hope my children develop as they grow. I want them to be responsible, curious, independent, and confident enough to make their own decisions. But there is another quality that matters deeply to me: I want them to notice other people.

It is easy to tell a child to be kind. It is harder to teach a child to look beyond what is happening in their own little world and recognize that someone else may need help.

I think that awareness is where being of service begins.

For me, being of service to others has never meant that we need to do something enormous. Often, it begins with simply paying attention.

Children Naturally See the World From Their Own Perspective

Young children are supposed to think about themselves. They are learning what they like, what they want, how they feel, and where they fit into the world. As a mother, I certainly hear plenty about who got what, who went first, whose turn it is, and whether something was fair.

I do not expect my children to automatically walk into every situation thinking about everyone else’s needs.

That awareness develops over time, and I believe we can help nurture it.

Instead of only reminding children to “be nice,” we can help them become more observant. We can ask whether they noticed that a friend was sitting alone, whether someone was struggling to carry something, or how they think another person felt during a difficult moment.

Those conversations help children practice looking outside themselves.

Helping Does Not Always Mean Giving Money

Because my first Backus BrightBots book teaches children about money and includes giving as one of its themes, I think it is especially important to make this distinction.

Being generous is not only about money.

A child can be of service by including someone who feels left out. They can help clean up without being asked repeatedly. They can hold a door, share their time, comfort a friend, make something for someone who is having a difficult day, or help a younger child with something they already know how to do.

As children grow, the opportunities change, but the principle does not.

We all have something we can contribute.

Sometimes it is money. Sometimes it is time. Sometimes it is knowledge, effort, patience, or simply our attention.

I want my children to understand that they do not have to wait until they are adults, have a job, or have a lot of money before they can make someone’s day a little easier.

I Want Service to Feel Like Part of Life

I do not want helping others to become something my children associate only with a special volunteer day or a donation made once a year.

Those things are valuable, but I want the idea of service to feel much more ordinary.

It can be part of how we live.

When we notice that someone needs help and we are able to help, we can do something. When we have more than we need, we can consider sharing. When we know how to do something that another person is struggling with, we can offer what we know.

I also want my children to understand that helping should come with respect. Being of service is not about looking down on someone or assuming we know what another person needs. Sometimes the most respectful thing we can do is ask, listen, and allow someone to tell us what would actually be helpful.

That is a lesson I continue to learn myself.

Children Are Watching What We Do

As parents, we can explain our values all day long, but children also watch how we live them.

They notice whether we are patient with someone who is having a difficult time. They hear how we speak about people. They see whether we thank someone who helps us. They notice whether generosity is something we talk about or something we actually practice.

I know I will not model this perfectly every day. There are rushed mornings, frustrating moments, and plenty of times when I am focused on getting three children where they need to go.

But perhaps children do not need perfection from us. They need enough real examples to understand what matters in our family.

One of the values I hope they recognize in mine is that we should try to leave people and places a little better when we can.

Receiving Help Matters Too

There is another side of service that I think deserves attention: our children also need to learn how to receive help.

None of us goes through life entirely on our own.

There will be times when my children are the ones with something to give, and there will be times when they are the ones who need another person’s kindness, knowledge, time, or support.

I do not want them to believe that needing help makes someone less capable or less valuable. If we teach children that helping is part of being human, then receiving help can be part of being human too.

That understanding can make service feel less like one person standing above another and more like what I believe it really is: people showing up for one another at different times and in different ways.

The Kind of Adults I Hope They Become

When I think about my children’s futures, of course I want them to find work they enjoy, become financially responsible, build healthy relationships, and create lives that feel meaningful to them.

But success, at least as I see it, cannot only be about what they accomplish for themselves.

I hope they become adults who still notice.

I hope they notice the person who has not been included in the conversation. I hope they recognize when their knowledge could help someone else. I hope that if they become successful, they remember that success can create opportunities to give back. Most of all, I hope they understand that being of service does not require recognition.

Sometimes nobody will know what you did except the person you helped.

That is enough.

At Backus BrightBots, the books I publish may explore very different subjects and may eventually speak to children, teenagers, parents, and adults. I do not know exactly where every future book will take me yet, and I actually like that there is room for the company to grow.

What I do know is that I want the work to have purpose.

If something I write can teach, encourage, comfort, or help another person in some small way, then it is doing something I care deeply about.

I want my children to grow up knowing the same thing about their own lives. Whatever talents, careers, resources, or opportunities they eventually have, there will always be a way to use some of what they have learned and some of who they are to be of service to someone else.

And I hope they begin by simply learning to notice.

With gratitude and a heart of service,

Claudia Backus, MBA
Founder, Backus BrightBots